Chapter 8 Brooks #2
He pauses for a moment, probably caught off-guard by the sudden change of location, and then presses my back against the wall again, leaning over me like we’re doing some sort of TikTok challenge.
I open my mouth ready to ask him what he’s doing, but stop when he puts his fingers under my chin and tips my face up toward him.
It’s so dark I can barely see anything, but his eyes are gleaming in the light of the dim moon, shining with amusement.
“If you wanted to get me into a darker corner, you just had to ask,” he whispers.
He slides the fingers of one hand down my neck, wrapping around the column of my throat for long enough to make me arch my back off the wall, and then continues down, brushing his fingertips between my breasts and over my belly, where he pauses to pull my flimsy blouse up.
I feel the brush of his hand against my skin there and gasp out loud, my body responding even when my brain tells it not to.
“Lucien,” I mouth, fighting for control. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Hush,” me murmurs, his lips trailing down the shell of my ear. “I didn’t have you wrapped around me long enough last night before you were yanked off me and I’ve been half hard ever since.”
His fingers dip under the waistband of my jeans and then under my panties, and I squirm against him.
My brain is screaming that we don’t have time for this–that we need to be planning–but my body agrees with every word he’s saying and is more than ready to offer itself up to finishing what we started last night.
My nerves are on fire, his fingers leaving a trail of light that may as well be glowing like a fucking light bulb.
Heat and moisture are blooming between my legs and when his fingers finally reach my pussy, I nearly cry with relief.
He brings his mouth down over mine, though, and swallows the cry before it can materialize.
This time the kiss is slow and sensuous, deep enough to steal a part of my soul as his fingers spread me and slip into my opening.
And Christ alive, I think this might be the most aroused I’ve ever been.
I’m keenly aware of the men behind this wall, making their plans, and the guard who’s about to discover us, and yet the danger, the impending doom, just makes me even hotter for the man currently finger fucking me.
Because Lucien and I have always walked a fine line between danger and lust. We’ve always been half enemies and half lovers, have forbidden and half destined for each other.
And this feels so perfectly us that I can’t find it in me to argue anymore.
Instead I open up further for him and welcome his fingers, reveling in the feeling of having him against me again, his hands on my skin and his lips against my throat. He’s hot and big and dangerous, everything I love the most, and if I could make this moment last forever, I would.
Unfortunately, we don’t have time for that.
“Tell me what you know,” I gasp, moving against his fingers.
His lips curve against my skin, and when he answers his breath is butterfly wings against my throat.
“I would take offense to the fact that you can think of such things when I’m buried up to my knuckles in you, Brooks, but this is one of the things I love about you.
” He pauses at that, caught short by what he’s just said, then rushes on.
“We have a hacker getting into your father’s files. Things have changed. There are more piers than there used to be. More girls.”
“I’ve seen them,” I say, fighting to stay present while I grind against his fingers. “I’ve seen them in person. I have access to all the databases.”
It wasn’t what he was expecting and he breathes for a moment, no doubt upset at being one-upped. “Right. Of course you do. But now we’re working with the same information. There are too many girls, Brooks, and they’re moving some of them in weird ways.”
I listen as he goes through where Aislyn is–the fact that they’re moving her more than they should–and want to nod, want to add something, but my body is winding up tight now, too close to release for me to speak.
Lucien pauses to run his tongue up beneath my ear, and I nearly come undone.
“There’s more,” he whispers directly into my ear.
He pushes his fingers further into me, curling them forward until they hit the spot he’s been looking for, and then bites my ear in warning.
“Quiet,” he murmurs. “Because there’s more.
We think we have forty-eight hours before they send out another shipment, and we think that shipment will include Aislyn Brennan.
Worse, we have word that there are foreigners involved. ”
“There were always foreigners involved,” I breathe, jerking against his finger as my climax starts to come on.
I’m fighting to remain conscious and part of the conversation, but there’s a part of me that is furious at Lucien for teasing me at a time like this, and that part is tethering me to the ground, even as my body wants to fly.
“But this time they’re not buying the girls,” he mutters.
He begins to pump his fingers into my harder, his actions now desperate and intense, and I ride him like a woman possessed, my body screaming for both release and the foundation that is Lucien, my heart hammering with the need to keep him here with me while I have him.
Because in a few short moments, I know I’m going to lose him again.
I orgasm so suddenly that I’m not expecting it, and only Lucien’s hand over my mouth keeps me quiet.
He fingers me through the orgasm, his body holding me against the wall when I try to sag, and once I’m finished, he moves his fingers to his mouth and sucks my juices off them, his dark eyes pinning me to the wall.
I nearly come again, just watching him.
And then I realize how much time has passed and start to panic.
I grab him and spin, pinning him against the wall when he’s not paying attention.
“Okay, you’ve had your fun. Now tell me what the fuck you’re talking about.”
He takes the time to kiss me deeply, transferring my taste from his tongue to mine, and when he pulls away I can see that his eyes are serious again. Serious and very concerned.
“You’re not safe,” he says quickly.
I just snort at that. “And you’re wasting time stating the opposite. What else?”
He pauses a beat, then dives in. “The Russians are here. They’re involved in the ring. And you and I both know what that means.”
Now it’s my time to keep my mouth shut, because I do know what that means.
The Russians have a big presence in New York and some of the other cities, but they don’t come to New Orleans.
No one down here wants them and their brutish way of doing things.
The only times they’ve come into town, they’ve ruined everything and killed so many people.
So if they’re here now...
“They’re transporting the girls,” I say, the pieces crashing together. The strangers La Petite Morte. The strange decor. The fact that the girls are being handled more roughly now.
And the transportation orders we can’t understand.
“And if they are, it means you’re even less safe than we thought,” Lucien says, his words clipped. “I need to get you out of here. You can’t stand with your father.”
He starts to push me like he thinks he’s just going to hustle me right off the balcony, but I stop him. “I can’t go anywhere.”
“What?” he asks, shocked. “I’m here to rescue you!”
“Well that’s very big of you,” I say, my voice full of sarcasm. “Because I’m obviously a girl that needs rescued.”
His look is cold in the heat of the night. “You’ve been kidnapped by your father, who has sold you twice and tried to kill you more times than I can count.”
“And he now thinks I’m going to step into my place as leader of the family,” I say. “He’s not going to sell me as long as that’s true.”
I turn and start tugging him toward the other end of the balcony, where I know there’s a trellis he can climb down.
“We have to get you out of here.”
He pulls against me, trying to slow me down, but the clock in my head is telling me that he’s already stayed too long.
“The guard is going to be back any moment, and he can’t find you here. Go back to where you came from, Lucien. Let me handle things on this end.”
He jerks me around, staring at me like I’ve lost my mind, but I don’t give him time to talk.
“I can do more good on the inside than I can on the outside, and you know it. You may have a hacker but he won’t find everything.
The only way to find everything is to be close to my father, and that’s exactly where I am now.
Without that, we can stop shipments of girls, but that’s it.
And how long until we get shot doing that?
From in here, I could stop the whole operation. ”
He’s thinking about it, I can see that much, and is opening his mouth to answer when I put a finger to his lips.
“I need to get as deep as I can so we can stop this, and you know it. I left girls to be shipped last night, and I won’t do it again, Lucien. I won’t fail again.”
He presses his lips together, his eyes a combination of sorrow and realization, and I know I have him. He might not like it, but he knows I’m right. He knows this is the only way.
Finally he leans toward me and brushes his lips against mine. “I’ll let you win this time. But the next time I see you, I’m getting you out,” he whispers.
I cling to him for a moment, desperate to keep him with me, but then let go and step back. “Stay alive and I might let you.”
One more long, considering look, and then he’s gone, disappeared over the railing like a fucking pirate off a treasure ship, and the night is still and dark again.
Seconds later, I hear the steps of the guard and move quickly back into the house.
Because I can’t afford to be caught out on the balcony when I’m supposed to be inside.
Not if I’m going to rescue the girls caught in this trap.